Warren Beatty once said at an awards ceremony: “We want to thank all of you for watching us congratulate ourselves tonight.” That remark seemed all too appropriate while watching The Matt Lucas Awards (BBC One), because this was a show in which the people most pleased with the finished product were those taking part.

This included Lucas himself, of course, who seemed to be labouring under the misapprehension that wearing a bow tie and having the studio designed to look like it is his flat makes the whole premise funny.

The idea is simple. This is “the show that gives out the awards that other shows don’t give”. That’s because the awards are all invented categories, presumably created for humorous effect (although it was not always easy to tell).

So, we had awards for The Smuggest Nation of People, The Most Artistic Guest, The Dreadfullest Football Song and The Most Efficient Guest. As you might expect, The Smuggest People was an opportunity to knock about a few national stereotypes (nobody said this was going to be cutting-edge comedy). Nominations were made by the show’s guests – last night, Manchester comic Jason Manford, former Goodie Graeme Garden and German comedian Henning Wehn – who settled on the Swedes, the English and the Chinese.

The Swedish came in for the biggest battering. “I find them a bit, ‘Look at us, with our brilliant economy, we’re really efficient and good-looking’. They’re like Germans but without the baggage,” quipped Manford. But, despite the anti-Swedish rhetoric, the award went to the Chinese. Mainly because the winners are picked by Matt Lucas on a whim.

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This all seemed like a pretty routine beginning. Surely things would get better? But no – it turned out this was the show’s intellectual and humorous high point. When at one point Lucas pretended to open the door on a female flatmate using the toilet, even the studio audience, who for the most part behaved as if they were being fed laughing gas intravenously, greeted it with bafflement.

We sank into the Most Artistic Guest section (watching comedians draw is not great TV). Then The Dreadfullest Football Song award featured host and guests wearing silly outfits and singing songs in an “aren’t we being funny?” way, reminiscent of children performing a show for their parents – an effect heightened by the fact that Lucas’s mum was actually there. She has a regular part in the programme, standing in the kitchen area of the “flat”. You know you’ve made it when you can get your mum a slot on your new series. (Just a thought, but how much is she being paid?)

The trouble with the comedy-chat-show-game-show hybrids that have burgeoned in recent years, from QI to Would I Lie to You?, is that guests are asked to go on and be funny but can end up looking very pleased with themselves in the process. Unfortunately, this new series really seemed to magnify that effect last night. Perhaps it’s down to Matt Lucas’s overexcited hosting; perhaps the idea of spoof awards is very self-satisfied. Or maybe it’s simply that Jason Manford really is as smug as a cat that’s swallowed a canary.